How I overcame a low milk supply

How I Overcame a Low Milk Supply by Amanda Nicholls at entertainmytribe.com.au

When you’re pregnant with your first baby, there is a lot of focus on what labour will be like. How you’ll get your baby into the world. Will you go au naturale or have you got the anaesthetist on speed dial. And there’s a tiny bit of thinking done about breastfeeding.

I remember saying to people, “I’m going to try to breastfeed but if it doesn’t work out, it won’t be the end of the world.” Oh how wrong I was. As soon as my brand new baby was in my arms, I was eager to do exactly what I was told and that was to breastfeed her. After 24 hours, I was exhausted beyond words, I was recovering from an episiotomy and all of a sudden, I was being thrown conflicting advice on how to feed… not to mention my poor nipples looked like a war zone.

When my daughter was two days old, a midwife came into my room. She saw a tired stressed mum and asked me when I last fed her. I was fumbling around looking for the clipboard where I was supposed to write feeding times down, I confessed I couldn’t quite remember and she grunted at me, walked away and came back with 70ml of formula in a bottle and shoved it in my daughter’s mouth. She fed happily and my heart was shattered. I felt like she’d just told me I was a huge failure and I could just go sit down while she handled my baby.

My Low Milk Supply

To this day – I blame that action on my low supply with my firstborn. My daughter slept for half a day with a belly full. Newborns don’t need 70ml of formula. But this midwife taught me how to make bottles of formula and kick started our journey to mix feeding. I would cry when I expressed milk and could only produce 30ml.

I would feed my daughter and second guess whether she’d had enough. I thought because I’d heard midwives saying that I needed to ‘drain the breasts’ that meant they were empty. That there was no more milk. And I always felt that after a feed my daughter was never satisfied. I remember breastfeeding her for an hour then following it with a full bottle.

I also remember expressing for a few days to produce a full feed and leaving it for family to feed her whilst babysitting and coming home to hear that they forgot to give it to her and tipped my milk down the sink.

Visiting the GP

I was determined to boost my supply so I went to my OB at my 6 week check up and asked for help. He prescribed Motilium which I took and was delighted to feel my breasts feeling like they were a pair of full milk jugs almost instantly! But the minute I ran out, I had lost my supply. I went to the GP and asked for a second script and he said to me “You were supposed to take it once and feed as much as you could and express to continue to build your supply. You can’t take it long term – it causes kidney problems.”

The final straw to my breastfeeding struggles came when my daughter became sick with bronchiolitis. Her throat was too sore to suck at the breast and she refused. By then I felt my supply was so low and she was ready for solids, so I called it a day. It saddened me because I hadn’t realised just how hard breastfeeding was and I secretly envied anyone who popped their baby on the breast and made it look easy.

I had myself convinced that I must be the kind of mum who wasn’t capable of exclusively breastfeeding babies. I thought that it was a big breast versus small breast thing (because I’m on the less endowed end of the booby scale). My teeny boobs weren’t enough to feed a baby. WRONG.

Second Time Around

Would you believe it if I told you that the second time round, I barely touched a bottle or a breast pump and exclusively fed my second daughter until she was 14 months?

Again I headed towards motherhood determined to feed, but this time I had the first hand knowledge that it really didn’t matter if I couldn’t because I had a perfectly healthy happy 2.5-year-old at home that was basically a bandit for the bottle until she turned 2.

Mother nature threw me a curve ball… baby number two had a tongue tie. Feeding her was brutal. I had the technique perfect but my nipples were damaged big time. I had midwives trying to latch my baby and this time, I’d swat them away and say I’ve breastfed before, I can do this. For me there is nothing more unhelpful than a third party (even if their intentions are great) attaching your baby to your breast. Because when you go home, you’re like, how the eff did they do that?

I finally had one midwife say to me, you should go and see the lactation specialist in a breastfeeding class. She’s not going to make you a priority because you’re a second time mum, so you’ll have to corner her. So I went and I pounced. And she was perfection.

I showed her my nipples and she could tell me from looking at them that my baby definitely had a tongue tie and that I’d need to pester the paediatrician to give me a referral to get it snipped. She even told me that it was better to have it cut surgically rather than lasered because the scar tissue that can form from laser would cause more complications with feeding.

I also told her about my issues with my firstborn and she confirmed that breast milk is produced by demand. That my baby needed to feed and feed and feed again to tell my breasts how much milk to produce. I said “but I always felt empty” and she said the magic words that made my second breast feeding journey a raging success… “your breasts are NEVER empty”. What? For real?

Patience and Persistence

It all made perfect sense. I settled in at home with my new baby and patience and persistence was the key. Also a bout of mastitis actually helped… it felt so bad I wanted to quit the world, but the cure was breastfeeding. I stopped looking at the clock and just kept offering the breast.

When my daughter cried, I offered the breast. When she needed sleep, I offered the breast. We packed the bottles and the steriliser away. The breast pump was used for about four weeks and packed in the cupboard. I fed and I finally understood so much more about breast feeding than I did the first time around.

Of course I wouldn’t change a thing about my journey with either of my beautiful girls, but if you are keen to feed… here’s some tips to get you on your way.

My Tips on Overcoming a Low Milk Supply:

• Speak to a lactation consultant or specialist – they specialise in feeding, latching, expressing, nipple damage, nipple shields the whole lot. And as lovely as midwives are, if you’re finding that breastfeeding is an up hill battle, ask if the hospital has a lactation specialist and book an appointment.
• If you want to increase your supply, throw the routine out the door and just keep offering the breast. You might feel like a dairy cow especially during all the cluster feeds but that is how your baby helps to increase your supply.
• If you’re worried like I was about how much milk they’re getting – the key indicators are these: Are they making lots of wet nappies? Are they pooping regularly? Are they putting on weight? Are they sleeping? Yes? You’ve got this.
• If you’re concerned about low milk supply, see your GP. And don’t be like me and get a script for a drug and assume it’ll fix all your problems – ask your GP to help you form a plan to boost your supply. You can also try things like boobie bikkies which have key ingredients to promote milk production. But feed bub and feed again. Your breasts produce what your baby demands so let your baby dictate how much milk your breasts make.

And finally…. You’re never empty.

Did you have a low milk supply?